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Audiophiles, hear this: The amazing Asus Xonar Essence STX finally faces a true competitor.
Creative’s Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium is startling in several ways. A gaming and music enthusiast’s audio card, this X-Fi is ready for Windows 7 (and Vista) out of the box and comes armed with Creative Alchemy, which restores multichannel positional audio for legacy Windows XP and Vista games. Watch out, though: The sheer fidelity of the card’s output will really make you notice any shortcomings in the quality of your speakers’ or headset’s sound. Another thing you’ll notice: Its analog outputs don’t include an option for more than two speakers. Users of 5.1 or 7.1 systems without optical or digital audio inputs or a decoder will probably want to think about another soundcard because of this.
Trust us on this one—your ears will thank you.
Our test bed’s crispy-clear Logitech Z-5500 5.1 kit is, thankfully, equipped to handle what the X-Fi Titanium HD has to offer, as are our Phiaton headphones.
To test this beast, we stayed in the real world, employing careful listening tests and comparing the clarity and accuracy of the card to Asus’s triumphant Xonar Essence STX. We played a dozen games and listened to countless hours of music, including CDs, ripped MP3s of various bitrates, and a studio-quality, 24-bit, 96kHz DVD of the Flaming Lips’ recent album Embryonic.
The games proved the card is a true player’s paradise. Dead Space and its sequel, which you could easily argue have the best sound design in gaming history, both sounded atmospheric and creepy with an impressive-sounding range of effects across all sound spectrums, and the positional audio was perfectly accurate through both a two-cone headset and the Z-5500. Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, BioShock 2, the underrated reboot of Medal of Honor, and Dead Rising 2 all sounded tip-top as well. Alchemy even made oldies-but-goodies like The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 sound snappy and vibrant.
Musical tastes vary, as do file formats, bitrates, and studio mastering. It would be impossible to list all the bands and songs we tested, but we hit every genre from ambient to experimental noise. To say we were blown away doesn’t do justice to how impressed we were with the audio this card pumped out.
It’s important to note that low bitrate rips are quite obviously tinny, with sizzle in the cymbal crashes—a card of the X-Fi Titanium HD’s prowess really exposes the flaws in an audio file. Our 320Kb/s MP3 rips, however, sounded fantastic, and the Lips’ studio-quality double album was so full of life, we noticed details in the music we never detected listening to a CD of the same material.
The card installed quite easily. The control software is typical Creative stuff (if you’ve used past generations of X-Fi cards, the Creative Console will be familiar from the outset). The X-Fi Titanium HD’s operational amplifiers are force-fit rather than soldered in, which means they’re replaceable; the card encodes Dolby Digital and DTS for HTPC purposes; it supports ASIO 2.0 for outstanding recording quality.
The only thing it doesn’t support, which might be a stickler for gamers, is Windows XP and prior versions of Microsoft’s ubiquitous OS. The Titanium HD was designed from the ground up for the audio driver stack of Windows Vista and 7.
So, is it better than the Xonar Essence? Honestly, we couldn’t detect a difference. Both cards are of such high quality that a purchasing decision will probably be determined by pricing, brand loyalty, or simple personal preference.
At its street price, which hovers in the $160 to $170 range (far lower than its MSRP of $300), gamers might stick with the crummy onboard audio that comes with every motherboard—but real audiophiles will find the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD a rewarding purchase.
$300, www.soundblaster.com
Close to perfect sound; excellent game support in Windows Vista and 7.
Expensive; analog-out ports for only two channels; reveals speaker / headphone weaknesses.
| Asus GTX 590 | |
|---|---|
| Frequency Response | 10Hz–90kHz (10Hz–46kHz via headphones) |
| DAC Resolution | 24-bit, 192kHz (24/96 via headphones) |
| Signal-to-Noise Ratio | 122dB max; 115dB min |
| Ports | 1/8-inch mic, 1/8-inch headphone; L/R RCA (with included stereo RCA-to-3mm adapter) line out; optical in/out. |
caterin
January 05, 2012 at 12:50am
t I am presented with the second-most frequently asked question by friends and family, “Where can I get a good deal on a computer for Christmas?Phlebotomy Training
Conin
July 11, 2011 at 9:38pm
After reading lots of reviews, I decided to buy two of these puppies, but after some hours of installing, tweaking and configuring, there's no way to make them support 7.1 channels, even when I was told by Creative Labs themselves that it actually supports 7.1 channels via the TOSLink output.
I think I'm going bak to my old X-Fi Fatal1ty Champion Series soundcard.
DirkBelig
June 13, 2011 at 11:14pm
Based on this review and others, I plunked down the cash for a worthless hunk of garbage that makes me want to take any future recommendations by MaxPC (which I've read since it was boot!) with enough sodium chloride to stop that Star Trek salt monster's heart.
I've wasted over four hours, installing, reinstalling, rinsing and repeating the installation and trying to get sound to work at all in games (only stereo works, if that) and surround in regular use. I've had just about every Creative card over the years - Live, Audigy, Audigy 2, X-Fi Fata1ity - and this has been the least functional, worst behaved POS ever! If I hadn't SLIed GTX 460s and thus needed to pull my perfectly fine X-Fi Fata1ity out of my rig, I would never have been in the market for a PCI-e card and no thanks to MaxPC, I'm now the owner of worthless joke and a lost evening. [mad face]
joeking
April 16, 2011 at 2:13am
Here's what I don't understand.
This soundcard only has 2-channel analog output. Yet in the review, it states Logitech Z-5500 were used, which are 5.1 speakers. So how did you connect them to the soundcard, through digital output? I certainly hope not, since outputing in digital completely bypasses the internal DAC and other circuitry of the soundcard, which would be a huge waste. Why pay that much for a souncard when you could get the same quality outputing digitally from motherboard audio?
Also, this would explain why the TitaniumHD and Essence STX sounded "the same", obviously if your outputting digitally to the speakers, it's using the speakers DAC, so it would sound exactly the same.
Someone please clear this up for me before I lose all hope in MaxPC reviews.
bo3bber
April 25, 2011 at 12:00am
The bottom two connectors are dual mode connectors that allow for RCA plugs, OR a long-nose optical connection. The very bottom one is dual mode for digital out. Creative includes the optical cable necessary for this connection. (2nd from bottom is optical in)
This optical mode includes your choice of DTS or Dolby Digital Live.
It does seem you are right when you say that going optical to the Z-5500 would bypass the high end circuitry for output. I think the audio review was mostly talking about headphone listening.
For Z-5500 listening, you theoretically get the advantage of Creative EAX 5 for current games.
In my experiments with this card, the audio was substantially better over the optical connection, than the onboard RealTek audio to the same Z-5500. This might be as simple as the Creative equalizer though.
I can't say my experience has been as stunning as everyone else here, including the reviewer. It's good, don't get me wrong. Just not stunning. (and I still don't trust Creative)
cantonman
April 05, 2011 at 10:56am
Out of curiosity I went to Creative's site to compare the specs of this latest card with their older hardware. They were identical (in all the important specs) back to the Audigy card. Is it simply the newer, and thus incompatible with old hardware, driver software that's making the difference? Am I misreading the specs or am I missing something? Do it for yourself, the wording is almost exact.
Are we really paying for better software rather than improved hardware?
Sovereign
April 05, 2011 at 7:35am
I too have an XtremeMusic. Though I also have a set of Z5500s, and the mention of said speakers in this article is sorely tempting me to put this on my birthday list... The XtremeMusic has served me well. The only annoyance is that it's a PCI card, which doesn't get along with 3ds max (snap, crackle, pop!).
ProtoJMB
April 04, 2011 at 11:50pm
I have the Xtreme Music card, and don't plan on upgrading at all. My card at least will do Dolby DECODING. Creative got it right the first time, and from then on it went down hill.
nbrowser
April 04, 2011 at 10:59pm
I just picked up this card's big brother the Titanium Fatal1ty Champion for my gaming rig, finally dispensing with the onboard, all I can say is Creative is finally back at it. Now I gota replace my craptacular olden Logitech Z-540 5.1 system....however thru my Sennheiser HD477 headphones, pure audio quality !
TheCrimsonKing
April 04, 2011 at 7:12pm
You got a problem with The Polyphonic Spree? What redneck school of technology did you attend?
Ghok
April 04, 2011 at 5:33pm
I just bought one of these last week to replace my old Creative Audigy that I've had for almost 10 years. Way too high end for what I use it for, but it actually wasn't much more expensive than other cards I found for sale at the time, except for a few really basic cards I wasn't into. No complaints.
Woo! Flaming Lips!
Baer
April 04, 2011 at 4:38pm
One thing I never have to upgrade are my large, high value and excellent speakers. There is no way I am dumping them to go to a new Creative card. I will stay with my Xonar.
I do agree however that integrated audio is really lacking in quality.
rawrnomnom
April 04, 2011 at 3:32pm
as appealing as you guys make this card sound, i have to stick with my tried and true xfi Xtreme music till i get some speakers that can take advantage of it... However i can attest to the huge difference between a discreet card and an intergrated controller...
CaptainFabulous
April 04, 2011 at 1:51pm
OK, I'm a bit confused. How can you get 5.1 out of games without individual speaker connectors? Or are you supposed sacrifice framerates and pay extra for Dolby Digital Live? Seems like a massive dealbreaker to me.
AFAIK you can't get multichannel sound via digital or optical out unless it's Dolby encoded on-the-fly. If I'm wrong someone please correct me.
Also, I wonder how it compares to older X-Fi hardware.
bo3bber
April 25, 2011 at 12:06am
It is Dolby Digital encoded on the fly, but by the soundcard, not by the CPU. You don't pay a framerate hit for 5.1 out of this card using the optical connector.
Conin
April 04, 2011 at 1:48pm
I recently installed one of these in my "daily" and my "gaming" rigs and am still surprised with the sound's quality when connected to an Onkyo HT-S9300THX.
